EngageNY ELA

My school district uses EngageNY for ELA (I teach fourth and fifth grade ELA) and it is astoundingly over the heads of most of my students. I try to drop the level of what I'm teaching, but I am not managing to get through most of the curriculum according to the pacing guides. Teaching one lesson a day doesn't work and I'm struggling to know what to cut and what to keep. I could easily get away with not teaching Engage at all, my principal supports meeting the students where they are, but I don't really know how to do that and still turn in the performance assessments that the district requires. Does anyone have suggestions on how to proceed?

I have taught Kindergarten for the past 14 years, and this is my first year in fifth. I am the only fifth grade teacher.

find the skills in the module lessons and teach those with other child friendly resources. The lessons are too long and the subject matter has to be broken down so much that it will eat up a lot of your time. Trust me, I spent an embarrassing amount of time on the UDHR. You may have these already, but the following are a few resources that I use.

I know it's Document Based Questions but that's really it. I've heard mention of these being used in our middle school for Science and Social Studies but what exactly are they? Are there any that you recommend?